sugar, sugar...

I read something terrifying today: according to this article, Britain spends more on obesity-related healthcare costs than on the police, the fire service, prisons and the criminal justice system combined, he says. Obesity-related conditions cost the NHS £6bn a year and rising. The diabetes bill is £9bn more. Type 2 diabetes now accounts for 10% of the entire budget of the NHS. More than 65% of all men in the UK aged 16 or over is now either overweight or obese.

Those are some frightening statistics.

I have a slightly different problem: I think I'm losing weight again.  I've written about this before, but I struggle to see myself as thin.  Since the age of about seven or eight, I've generally been big for my age.  I was tall, rather than particularly fat, but children tend to see things in absolutes, and if you have big feet and take a bigger size of shorts than they do, then you're fat.  I think this set my body-image fairly early, but it's also true that I have been about 40kg heavier than I am now. I lost that weight fairly steadily over a number of years, but I've never quite shaken that picture of myself as big.

Still, the fact remains that, by most people's estimation, I am pretty thin.  You can count my ribs and everything. I eat absolutely loads - especially bread - but I just can't put weight on.

It's probably all that running I do.

Anyway.  I'm about 4 weeks into marathon training -- sponsor us HERE -- I've upped my mileage and have covered about 120 miles so far this month.  And, well.... my trousers feel a bit loose.

I mentioned this to a colleague this afternoon, and she asked me if I'd started eating more to cover the extra calories I'm burning up in marathon training.
"Um.  Well, I eat loads"
"Yes, but have you started eating more?"
"No.  But I eat loads"
"And you're wondering why you might be losing weight? You need to look after yourself."

She's right, of course.  I've acted on her advice immediately and had sausages for tea.  I'm planning bacon and maybe black pudding for my breakfast.  That's a start (albeit absolutely no different to what I eat every week).  My mother-in-law is coming over for a visit next weekend too, and she's threatening to stock the freezer.  As she's an excellent cook, this is a most welcome development indeed.

I understand that there are also calories in beer?

I need to look into this.

not succulent, tasty or kind...

Sad news.

It seems that bacon, ham and sausages may be in the same category of carcinogens as cigarettes, alcohol and arsenic (class 1 carcinogens).  So say the World Health Organisation, anyway.  In fact, they've essentially concluded that red meat is carcinogenic to humans full stop (class 2a carcinogen).

That sounds bad, but they've also said that breathing air is a class 1 carcinogen, so it's difficult to know what exactly we're supposed to do with these conclusions.  It's not as though all that many people are on a 40 sausage-a-day habit, so a direct comparison with smoking also seems a little unfair.

I'm reminded of an article Jeremy Paxman wrote a few years ago where he had been reading the National Dictionary of Biography, and observed that people don't just die in their sleep or of old age any more.  You might be 199 years old, but when you die, we will be able to observe exactly what it was that finally pushed you over the edge.

These observations on what causes these cancers seems to me to fall into the same kind of category; processed meat may well cause cancer, but it's probably been killing us as a species for thousands of years and we've only now been able to determine exactly how.

This is all fairly timely for me.  I had a scan the other day that revealed some abnormalities in my bowel that need to be removed.  They're probably not cancerous, but over the course of the next ten years or so, they're reasonably likely to become cancerous, so they've got to come out.  It's an amazing thing that we can find this out now and do something about it, but it's not very difficult to imagine how, in another time and place, this could easily have gone completely undetected and perhaps carried me off in my seventies.  That's how people used to die, isn't it? At the end of it all, something has to kill you, after all.

When I was having the scan a few weeks ago, I was chatting to the guy supervising the process:
"So, what causes these abnormalities?"
"Well, we can't really say for certain, but it seems likely that they can be caused by eating processed meats like bacon and by drinking beer...."  At this point, I think he must have seen the look on my face as my world was pulled out from under my feet and I contemplated a world without bacon and beer. "....but then again, teetotal vegetarians get them too, so who really knows?"

Who indeed.

it's my only joy...

Someone asked me today if I was having a dry January.  I think I may actually have recoiled in horror at the very thought of it.  Hell no!  January is one of the darkest and most dreary months of the year; everyone is fairly miserable because they're back to work after a nice break over Christmas.  Why the hell would anyone think that this was a good time of year to be giving up anything, nevermind the sweet consolations of alcohol?

But of course, that's exactly what loads of people do every New Year: give up drinking, give up smoking, join a gym, start eating more healthily.... good luck to them, I say.

Perhaps this is taking things too far though:

(This prompted uproar on Facebook, and I was particularly tickled by the comment in response "Sometimes if I feel a little weak, I'll treat myself to a big cry and drink my tears with a small squeeze of lemon and enough rage to see me through till home time." Also, showering *before* you run? Really?  It's okay though, guys.... she likes Creme Eggs.  Although perhaps not since they changed them? That doesn't explain the whole shower-before-exercise thing, mind.....)

I like a beer.  I really do.  I look forward to a beer at the end of a long week.  The idea of giving up strikes me as a needless act of self-denial.  I like drinking beer and I like shopping for interesting beer in the interesting beer shop just around the corner.  Oktoberfest beers were great, but then we were into Christmas beers and I've been very much enjoying the Belgian festive brews that he stocks.....

Then I thought about it: I barely actually drink at all and I don't especially like being drunk.  I enjoy beer but drink perhaps four pints a week, maybe five.  I also quite like wine, but I've still got a bottle open in the kitchen that I started drinking at the beginning of December.  I actually don't drink during the week at all.  Compared to some, I'm practically teetotal.

But I like beer!

In fact, to hell with it: I'm going to have a beer right now.  On a Thursday night and everything.  I'll use it to wash down my kale salad with pistachios, olives, dried cherries, argan oil and just a tiny amount of apple cider.

Rock and roll.

.... and I got myself a beer

On Saturday evening, we had a lovely dinner with some friends at Alyn Williams at the Westbury in Mayfair.  We don't go out for dinner all that often, but when we do, it's nice to go somewhere really excellent.  Actually, we were really tagging along with the same couple who gave me the Serrano ham for my birthday (thus reinforcing their claim to be the *best* kind of people).  They were good enough to invite us, and as we weren't planning on spending Easter with our families, what better than to spend it with your friends?

Often, when we come to this sort of restaurant, I have the taster menu with an accompanying flight of wines.  I don't really know much about wine, but it's nice to hear the sommelier telling you about the wine and why it's been chosen to accompany each dish.  It adds to my enjoyment of the meal.... and as you're often having multiple courses, a glass of wine with each course soon adds up, and by the end of the evening, you can be rolled out of the premises.  It's all good.

This time around, because it was on offer, I decided to have a flight of beers to accompany my meal.  It's the latest thing, apparently, to pair excellent beer up with the food, and I was curious to see what they came up with.

Well, here they all are:

Served to accompany langoustine/lemongrass/chilli/coconut/cucumber.

This beer is apparently finished off with some champagne yeast, and this gave it a more refined, interesting finish than your average lager, and it went very well with the fragrant seafood starter.  A good start.

Served to accompany hake/nasturtium/asparagus/sea urchin.

I'm pretty sure I've had this before.  It's a fairly typical new world IPA with bold, hoppy flavours, but it has a lovely spicy nose.  You probably wouldn't think that it would go well with the food, but actually it really does.

Served to accompany foie gras semi fredo/prune/celeriac/bacon/espresso.

This is brewed by Sharp's Brewery, the same guys who make Doom Bar and who have just been taken over by Coors.  It's a dark, sweet beer that, in my opinion, overwhelms the dish.  It was tasty, but I think too rich in flavour for the food.

Served to accompany Iberico pork/spices/spring salad/tarragon emulsion.

This was a delicious combination, with the beer not being one of those overpoweringly alcoholic Belgian beers, but being robust enough to hold it's own with the meat.  I really enjoyed this one.

Served to accompany Lomeswood Farm duck/wild garlic/barigoule or Pyrenees lamb/Jersey royals/seaweed/black truffle (I had the lamb).

They sell this in the beer shop round the corner from me, so I'm familiar with Bavarian smoke beer.  I generally find these a bit much when served on their own, but it worked well with the lamb.

(at this point I had a very tasty cheese course with a glass of port before the final push for home....)

Served to accompany a mango/avocado/meringue/sherbet
followed by
Chocolate/melilot/date/salt

Another one from Sharp's and another winner with the sweet courses.  This apparently has an ABV of 10%, but by this point the other beers have worked their magic and I didn't even notice how strong it was.

So that was it.  Do I think it was a worthwhile exercise?  Absolutely, yes.  Two of us at the table were having the beers with our food, and so the sommelier brought us one bottle for each course to share between us, and that worked out quite well: not too much, but enough to accompany the food.  It was also a bit less of an alcoholic slog than having the wine, which was good (although, in fairness, C isn't much of a drinker, so I also had a crack at a fair bit of her wine...which was excellent).  My favourite was probably the Goose Island IPA, but they were all really good beers and it was interesting to really savour beer with excellent food; a different flavour with each course.

It's not as expensive as you would think either: the taster menu is £65 (and they also have a full vegetarian taster menu too, which my friend Jonny says was excellent).  With matching wine, this is £125, and if you choose to have the prestige wines, it's £190.  Not cheap, for sure, but for Michelin starred food,  I don't think that's too bad and I've paid nearly as much in vastly inferior restaurants in Nottingham (I'm looking at YOU, The Riverbank...).

One gripe: the taster menu with beer was £110.  That means that you're paying £45 for the beer.  In other words, the two of us having beer paid £90 for six bottles of beer.  I know there's a mark up.  Of course there's a mark up!  We've all been served wine in a restaurant that we could have bought in Tescos for a fraction of the price.... you expect a mark up.  But.....but....but..... I picked up some of the Goose Island IPA when I popped into Waitrose in town on Monday, and it was retailing for less than £2 a bottle.  That's a little galling, wouldn't you say?

It was fun, but next time I'm having wine.  For that much money, I think I'd like to have something I can't get round the corner.

big man, pig man....

Apparently, I'm difficult to buy presents for.

 I don't agree with this, reckoning that all you need is a bit of imagination, but I've been told many times that this is the case so it seems that lots of people in my life believe it to be true.  It's true that I tend to buy myself anything that I really want rather than hoping that someone will get it for me, but surely to goodness it can't be too hard to think of something that I might like.  Can it?

I think a present that I was given yesterday rather proves that imaginative gift buying isn't quite dead yet.

I got given a whole serrano ham.

I'd rather thought that after a good six weeks of milking it, my fortieth birthday celebrations might be over, but apparently there was at least one more surprise in store.  The friends we visited over the weekend had ordered this little beauty some time ago and had been eagerly awaiting delivery.

So, now I'm the proud owner of both a ham and the stand to put it on.  It's as if they read my mind and thought of the one thing that was missing from my kitchen.

That's a lot of ham.  It's salted and air-dried, so it should last a while.... and in the meantime, I've been discovering the joys of carving my own ham and serving slices with olives.  It's a little taste of sunshine and it's lovely.  I also won't need to be buying any pre-packed slices from the supermarket for my lunch for the next little while.

It does, however, present me with a middle-class problem: how do I keep the cat off my whole serrano ham?  She's thus far only shown a ground-level interest, but this could yet develop into a battle of wills if she ever acquires enough of a taste for excellent quality artisanal ham to venture up onto the counters to help herself.

Good job I like my vitamin P, eh?  If anyone fancies popping round for a slice or two over the next few weeks, then please feel free as I should have plenty to go around.

What a brilliant gift, eh? Nice one R&L!

what next is the question?

In a few week’s time, two of my closest friends and I will be turning 40. We were born within a few days of each other, and although our mothers never said we could be sister and brother, and none of us is called Deborah, over the last decade or so, we have fallen into the habit of celebrating together. We had a big old blow out ten years ago, hiring a venue and having a bit of a disco, and we didn’t really want to let another milestone go by without at least some kind of acknowledgement.

Things are more complicated now than they were in 2004 – ah, those halcyon, sepia-tinted days of memory. Although I still live in the same house, one friend now has a son who occupies most of his spare time, and the other lives in the Hague. It has, therefore, fallen upon me to find a venue fitting for such a momentous occasion. We’re likely to have around about twenty people join us in the celebrations, and I’ve been scratching around a little to find a venue that is both:

a) Nice enough. I’m old enough not to want to slum it on my fortieth birthday.

b) Big enough to be able to accommodate us all

There’s the added complication that one of my friends seems to want to eat at around 4pm. For me, this is neither lunch nor dinner, and most restaurants seem to agree. His rationale is that a lunch leaves us a lot of drinking time in the afternoon, and that dinner will be too late because we will have spent all day drinking. A meal halfway between the two, for him at least, strikes a happy balance.

I spoke to one restaurant that seemed to fit the bill, but they wanted me to commit to a miniumum spend of £2000 (plus 12.5% service), and that seems steep, so I kept looking. I’ve just found another possibility that has a private room available for a meal from 5pm and has an excellent cocktail bar onsite too. Promising, I thought. They helpfully sent me some menus that would be available for the day, and I thought I’d better look to see how well they catered for my vegetarian friends (in fact, both of my fellow celebrants are vegetarians).

….Hmmm.

There are a couple of vegetarian options (although it has to be said that “humous and couscous” doesn’t sound all that promising as the only vegetarian main, but as it’s an excellent restaurant, I’m sure it’s delicious). One starter in particular really caught my eye: “veal tartare with foie gras”. Wow. That’s pretty much the anti-vegetarian dish, isn’t it? Cow taken straight from the crate and served raw with a grotesquely swollen liver from a forcefed goose nailed to a board. If you wanted to put together a dish to outrage, then that would probably be right up there with baby seal steaks (ethically clubbed, obviously), polar bear cub carpaccio and a particularly delightful tiger-meat bourgignon.

Is it bad that I’d consider ordering that?

The veal tartare, I mean. The others basically all taste like chicken.

seasons change with the scenery....

We've had a long, late Autumn this year... but the cold weather seems finally to be closing in with a vengeance and the last of the golden leaves are falling from the trees to form a frosty layer on the side of the road.

That can only mean one thing!  

Yes: time to start making casseroles and chillies and other soothing, luscious, slow-cooked meals.  It seems I'm not the only person to be thinking this, and over at Uborka they've been hosting CassFest all week, where various contributors are sharing their recipes for homely, slow-cooked goodness.

So far, we've had Lyle's Slow Chilli, minibeastgirl's Shepherd's Stew Pie, Karen's Roast Pepper Chilli, Stroppycow's Pork Belly and Pineapple, Pix's Slow Cooker Sausage Casserole and we've also had Swisslet's Stew.

Yeah.  I'm branching out into recipes.  I'M COMING FOR YOU, OLIVER!

Farmer's market shin beef, delicious root veggies, red wine and...er... a tin of anchovies.  Trust me, it's an umami thing.  Delicious.  Also, because this recipe was written by me, there's a pointless, rambling anecdote on why making cocktails is a science but cooking is an art.

You can read it all HERE.  It's bad form to just republish, innit.

Comfort food FTW because [adopts ridiculous Yorkshire accent and stares mysteriously into the far distance]

Winter is coming....

Wrap up warm and eat stew.

we'll have lasagne...

alimentary, my dear Watson....

For reasons that I can’t even remember now, I found myself reading an article online the other day that discussed how long it actually took food to pass through the human gut. I forget the exact details, but the answer was something like “it depends”, but that essentially a good meal could take a good couple of days to work its way through your system as it is thoroughly processed through miles and miles of the alimentary canal.

Even though I had only stumbled across the page by happenstance, and there was quite a lot of detail, the article was interesting enough to hold my attention for at least long enough to pick up that small fact. Hmm. Interesting, I thought, and bumbled off randomly digging for other such treasures on the world wide web.

Little did I realise how interested I would soon suddenly be in that particular nugget of information....

I had leftover lasagne for my tea last night. My wife likes to brag about the quality of her lasagne, but in all the fourteen years or so that we have been together, I think she has only ever cooked it for me twice. This wouldn’t normal bother me all that much, except for the fact that I used to make what I considered to be a decent lasagne of my own, and her celebration of her own product made me feel like I couldn’t make it any more…. Meaning that I almost never eat lasagne any more.

I like lasagne.

Anyway. She made me a lasagne this weekend and it was delicious. As she was away in Italy for the first part of the week, I was delighted that there was enough leftover to have re-heated lasagne as a more than acceptable midweek tea.

“I’ve left the lasagne in the fridge in a glass container. It’s ovenproof, so all you have to do it to take of the plastic lid – which isn’t – and pop it in to reheat.”

Perfect (although I like to imagine that I’m not so much of a moron that I would put a plastic lid into the oven, but I suppose you never know…)

Yesterday evening, I popped the dish (minus lid, of course…) into the oven and set about preparing some kale. I like kale: it's a wonderfully dark and mysterious brassica. I wasn’t sure how long the lasagne would need to reheat, but figured that I’d give it a good half an hour or so at about 180 degrees. It’s not that big deal to eat lukewarm lasagne, but I’d popped a few fresh sheets of parmesan on the top, and I wanted the whole thing to be nice and crispy.

Imagine my disappointment when I went back to the oven to find that the ovenproof glass dish had cracked into four pieces. It looked to be otherwise intact, perhaps held together by the lasagne, so I took it out and tipped it upside down onto a plate to have a good look. I couldn’t see any glass, and the pieces of the dish seemed to fit together neatly enough, so after about ten seconds of consideration – I really, really like lasagne, and this was a really, really good lasagne – I decided to eat it anyway. Carefully.

It was tasty, but I had a nagging little doubt in my head. It’s really not a good idea to eat glass, is it? I’m a history graduate, and I’m pretty sure that more than one Pope met his end with powdered glass in his food. To ease my mind, I stood up and had a look in the oven…. There were little shavings of glass on the bottom. Not much, but more than enough to shatter my illusion that the container had broken cleanly. I sat back down and had another few careful mouthfuls, poking to the bottom of the pile to eat the crispy fresh parmesan layer that I put on the top before flipping the whole thing over. It was lovely, but my heart wasn’t really in it any more, and I now had visions of a slow and painful death over the next 48-72 hours as pieces of glass made a mincemeat of my upper and lower intestinal tract, causing me to gush blood from both ends.

I ate a bit more. I’d already eaten the bottom layer, so what the hell? I left a token bit on the plate just to prove to myself that I’m not a total idiot. I had a big cup of tea and some cake. Well, together with all the kale I’d eaten, that was just providing a sensible layer of padding to ease the passing of the glass through my digestive tract. I’m not googling that, but that’s pretty much science isn’t it?  I ate loads more cake today too, just in case.

So, if I die horribly in the next 48 hours, then you’ll know that eating food from a broken glass dish is a really stupid idea.

It was a really good lasagne though.

Maybe even worth it.

If you said that these are the best days of our lives....

10-ish miles on the bike in three separate rides, 5-ish miles with running club, a properly invigilated written exam at work with a formal qualification at the end (if I pass).... and farmers' market sausages (rutland smokies) and mash with Jerusalem artichokes for tea.

Who says weekdays have to be dull?

Today has been AWESOME*!

* For a weekday**

** In October***

*** When you're working ****

**** ...and nothing much else is going on *****

***** ....and you have to be at work in the morning.

Apart from that, it's been great!

Maybe tomorrow will be EVEN BETTER?!


Right?

is it, is it wicked?

I went on a road trip with some colleagues today to visit a number of our shops.  We didn't go too far - just down to Leicester and across to Newark - but we were away for most of the day and I was nearly forced into a lunchtime crisis....

We almost ate at McDonalds.

The other guys I was with were keen, but I haven't eaten in a McDonalds for over ten years now and I wasn't about to start now.  I'm not singling out the Golden Arches especially, because in that time I haven't eaten in a Burger King or a KFC either.  I'm no campaigner either: it's not that I particularly object to them or object to other people eating in them, it's just that I've made a personal decision that I would rather eat my food and spend my money somewhere else.  It's entirely up to you if you want to feed yourself that stuff, but I've decided that I just plain don't want to.  That's it.  I used to eat them as much as the next man, but I woke up one day and decided that it was no longer for me.  I don't remember them being horrible so much as lukewarm, slightly sweet smelling and never quite as tasty as I remembered them being.  I can remember the first time I was taken to a McDonalds too: I was about six or seven years old and they had just opened their branch in the Central Milton Keynes shopping centre, and I was taken there as a treat with my friend.  Over the next twenty years, I would often eat in the very same branch before heading over to the cinema to watch a film (well, before I swapped my allegiance to the BK up the mall instead.  They did onion rings, you see).  But I stopped eating that stuff completely ten years ago, and I haven't missed it at all.  I'd just rather eat elsewhere.

I wouldn't really have minded if my colleagues had insisted we go today, but I definitely would not have eaten anything there and I told them this.  To be honest, they seemed a little surprised and suggested that perhaps it would do me good to have a Big Mac meal.  After all, they said, there's nothing better after a night on the tiles.

Well, I had a quiet night last night, but even if I did have the stinking hangover from hell, I wasn't about to feed myself a Happy Meal, no matter how enticing the latest movie tie-in toy might look.  I'm sure that all of McDonald's claims about their ingredients being wonderful are probably true and they may have impeccable nutritional credentials*.... but that honestly doesn't make me want to eat them.  Fill your faces if you like, but I'm out.

*as part of a healthy balanced diet, of course

I can hardly claim any high ground here: we had this conversation as we were drinking coffees from Costa, and we ended up eating our lunch in the Newark branch of Wetherspoons..... so it's not as though I'm only patronising high class Italian delicatessens with organic, artisanal pesto and  coffee beans from an eco commune in Guatemala whilst sneering at the rest of you lumpen proles stuffing yourselves and your fat children with greasy fast food**.  I just don't want to eat McDonalds thanks.

** I'd rather be doing this, clearly.

As it happens, my lamb rogan josh served at the Wetherspoons pub as part of their Thursday Curry Club and served with a drink, rice, naan, two poppadoms and some mango chutney for the princely sum of £5.99 was perfectly acceptable, thanks very much.

Whether you eat in McDonalds or not, we can at least all agree that the clown is just creepy though, right?  What did he do to the Hamburglar anyway?  Vigilante justice?

handlebars....

On a normal week, I burn quite a few calories through exercise.  I won't profess to be an expert and I'm sure this isn't an exact science, but I plug my age, height, weight and gender into the gadgets I use to track my running and this is the rate of calorie burn that they tell me.

Until this week, a typical week for me might go something like this:

Monday: Running 4.45 miles, 629 calories
Tuesday: rest & injection
Wednesday: Running 3.29 miles, 471 calories
Thursday: Swimming 50 lengths (0.75 miles), 195 calories
Friday: rest & beer
Saturday: Running 4.00 miles, 579 calories
Swimming: Swimming 50 lengths (0.75 miles), 192 calories

(since the problems with my knee over the summer, I've also reduced my running mileage somewhat from the 20-ish miles per week I was managing before, with the addition of a long sunday run).

That totals 2,066 calories.  I also do two or three short sessions in the gym doing some leg exercises, which probably burns off a few more.  Apparently the average man needs about 2,500 calories per day to maintain his weight, so I'm basically doing enough exercise to eat another day's worth of food every week (not to mention that there's also apparently a "halo effect" after exercise where you continue to burn calories at an elevated rate for another couple of hours).

This energy burn is one of the reasons why I basically eat what I want and I'm still relatively thin.

I've started cycling to work last week, and for the last five working days I've commuted on my bike instead of hopping in the car.  It feels pretty good, to be honest.  I've been getting to work for 06:30 this week (for various reasons), and after the shock of the alarm, it's actually been really nice getting on my bike and riding to work just as it starts to get light.  The route is a shade under four miles and takes me about twenty minutes, which is not much slower than using the car.  It's also an awful lot easier cycling to the gym along the canal than it is driving there through the centre of town in rush hour.

I am, of course, burning more calories.  I haven't been swimming this week because of my new tattoo, but here's what's happened since last Thursday when I started cycling to the office:

Thursday:
cycle home -> work.  4.24 miles, 238 calories
cycle work -> gym. 3.79 miles, 232 calories
swimming. 50 lengths (0.75 miles), 314 calories
cycle gym -> home.  1.96 miles, 109 calories
Friday:
cycle home -> work.  3.67 miles, 189 calories
cycle work -> home (via the barber): 4.84 miles, 267 calories
Saturday: tattoo
Sunday:
cycle ride.  28.01 miles, 1,603 calories
Monday:
cycle home -> work. 3.96 miles, 230 calories
cycle work -> gym. 3.76 miles, 233 calories
running club. 4.39 miles, 626 calories
cycle gym -> home. 2.22 miles, 120 calories
Tuesday:
cycle home -> work. 3.94 miles, 204 calories
cycle work -> home (via osteopath). 5.80 miles, 326 calories
Wednesday:
cycle home -> work. 3.93 miles, 201 calories
lunchtime run. 3.32 miles, 488 calories
cycle work -> home. 4.01 miles, 233 calories.

Even without the big cycle on Sunday, that adds up to 4,903 calories: two days' worth of food .  With Sunday's ride that total is 6,506.  It looks like adding cycling to my daily routine will double the amount of calories I burn through exercise.  I didn't go for my usual run on Saturday either.

Um.

I take this data with a pinch of salt, of course.  But even so....I think I might need to start eating more.

In possibly related news, I'm buying a pair of padded cycling shorts.

cream. get on top (?)

I promise I'm not going to go on about our trip to Devon all week, but I can't very well finish talking about it without mentioning the food, can I?

In a word: amazing.

cream then jam or jam then cream?

Cream teas, obviously.  On the important question of clotted cream then jam, or jam then clotted cream, C deferred to me because my family are from Devon.  It's been so long since I had one that I'd actually forgotten how it was done.  Initially, I went for cream and then jam, but at the wedding in Tavistock, the scones were presented with the cream on top, which now I think about it seems to be much more sensible.  I can hear my paternal grandparents turning in their grave that I don't know this.  On the list of crimes in Devon, getting this wrong is probably only a little behind ordering a gin and tonic without using Plymouth Gin or asking for a "cornish pasty".  If it's anything like putting milk in your cup before the tea or afterwards, then one of these ways of putting a cream tea together is WRONG.  Which one, though?  Hmm.

Speaking of pasties, I had one of them too.  It was only from a little kiosk by the church in Widecombe-on-the-Moor, and it only cost me £2.50... but pound for pound it was probably the best thing that I ate all week.  As we sat there enjoying working our way through this massive heft of pasty, the kiosk was overrun by French bikers, on a roadtrip to the UK and extremely disgruntled by the picnic lunch laid on by the UK chapter of their club.  The guy we spoke to was muttering darkly about army biscuits with a strange liquid butter.  I think he was talking about a cream tea..... he was trying to order a cheeseburger, and was extremely sceptical when the lady behind the counter suggested a pasty instead.  C. intervened, and he sat down next to us and tucked in dubiously with his pocket knife and a fork.  Much to his surprise, he found it delicious, and was astonished to find that - apparently unusually for England - it was seasoned properly and was nice and peppery.

We ate well in our hotel too, both for dinner and with the full English breakfast each morning (and the St Austell beers were pretty good too).  The obvious highlight of the culinary week was our trip to Gidleigh Park... only two miles up the road from Chagford, but home to a two Michelin starred restaurant run by Michael Caines.

We had the eight course signature menu, accompanied by a "flight of wine", and for three hours we were able to sit back and enjoy some outstanding cooking and to enjoy the whole experience of having a sommelier explain the wine choice with every course.  It was amazing.   In fact, just so I can enjoy the thought of the meal all over again, here's the menu we had.

A delicious glass of properly good champagne accompanied by some appetisers (including a remarkable tomato consomme)
--
Warm salad of native lobster with a cardamon, lime and mango vinaigrette
served with a glass of Rias Baixas O'Rosal 2012 Terras Gauda
--
Terrine of foie gras with madeira jelly, truffled green bean salad
served with a glass of Mosel Riesling Kabinett 2011 Joh. Jos. Prum, Kabinnett, Wehlener Sonnenuhr (I'm no expert, but I thought this was the most harmonious combination of wine and food).
--
Cornish salt cod with Beesands crab, chorizo, samphire, tarragon and lemon puree
served with a glass of Seresin Chiarascura Chardonnay, Pinot Gris & Riesling 2009 Marlborough
--
Cornish duck with cabbage, smoked bacon, roast garlic, turnips and spice jus
served with a glass of Bergstrom Cumberland Reserve Pinot Noir 2010 Willamette Valley
--
Dartmoor lamb, boulangere potato and confit shoulder, fennel puree and a tapendade jus
served with a glass of Les Baux de Provence 2005 Henri Milan, Le Clos
--
A selection of South West Cheeses: Sharpham Elmhirst, West Country Cheddar, Little Stinky, Beauvale Blue
served with a glass of Port Lbv 2009 Quinta do Gaivosa (delicious, but a course made totally worth it just to hear a French sommelier explaining how the complexity of the port brought out the flavour of the "Leetel Steeenkee".)
--
Exotic Fruit salad: passion fruit sorbet and crystalline of pineapple
(it's always good to have a pre-dessert course, right?)
--
Plate of Apricot: apricot and almond nougatine parfait, apricot mousse and sorbet
served with a glass of Ruedera Chenin Blanc 2009 Stellenbosch.
--
Coffee and petit fours.

Words can hardly do justice to how good this meal was.  I preferred the white wines to the reds, on the whole, and I the foie gras and the salt cod were my two favourite courses, but it was a truly exceptional meal and I now want to go back as soon as possible with friends.  It's not an everyday kind of a meal, but once in a while it's a real treat.... not cheap, for sure, but still much better value than many of the restaurants in Nottingham.

I think I need to take more exercise to work that lot off.  Starting tomorrow, I'm going to cycle to work.  On top of everything else, obviously.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to learn how to fold up a shirt.

put your name on it....

We had one of those lunchtime retirement dos in our office the other week.  You know, the kind of thing where they book out a meeting room, take in a few apologetic cans of beer that no one will drink and then salute someone for wasting the best years of their life at work.

They're not usually my thing, to be honest... but I made a point of attending this one for two reasons: firstly because forty years at one company is no mean achievement, but most importantly because this guy may just be the most pleasant man in the world.  I think it's fair to say that he wasn't always the most effective of operators, but in spite of that, no one had a bad word to say about him.  Not a single person.  There was simply no dirt to dig up on him at all and everyone was genuinely sorry to see him go.  A lovely man and well worth fifteen minutes of my time to say goodbye.

Besides, they were serving cake.

And what a cake!  We have a catering outlet in our office, and they will bake cakes for occasions like this.  To mark forty years of sterling service, we had a massive sponge cake, covered in icing.  It was round, but about ten times bigger than your average victoria sponge.  It was massive.

Here's the thing, though.  It came with cutting instructions.  A suitably large knife was provided, but was a diagram of how the cake should be segmented really be necessary?

How hard can it be?

I wonder if they've ever had complaints: "We ordered a cake for sixty people, and we only managed to squeeze forty-seven slices out of pathetic confection.  I demand my money back forthwith!"

Well, if you order a cake for sixty people, it seems you get instructions and an explanatory picture explaining how you segment this round sweet treat into sixty slices.  Perhaps the problem is that it is round?  When confronted with a round cake, I suppose people probably like to cut segments.  Fine on a normal cake, perhaps... but on a giant cake?  Folly. Pure folly.  The slices will be unmanageable and your portion potential is greatly reduced.  You've got to go rectangular.  It's the only way.  Squares, perhaps.  Right angles definitely.

.... Or perhaps you could assume instead that a room full of people collectively responsible for millions and millions of pounds of budget each year might just be able to slice a cake of any shape into the required number of pieces without instructions?

Hmm.

No.  You're right.  Instructions it is.  It's either that or bake a square cake.

live fast, love hard, die young...

I can't be the only person in the world to embrace the concept of a "headline sandwich", right?

Hmm.  Perhaps I'd better explain.

I generally make a pack lunch to take to work.  It's not that it's all that much cheaper than what's on offer at work - where we have an extensive selection of reasonably priced sandwiches as well as a good variety of hot cooked meals - it's just that I like the simplicity and the flexibility of choosing what I eat.  This way, if I see some home cooked ham on the bone at the Farmer's market, I can buy it and know that I've got a use for it.  Or if I see a delicious 2 year aged Lincolnshire Poacher cheese, I can go for that too.  Or even if I just fancy a bog standard tuna mayo.  It's all good.

Every day, I take into work the following foods:

• two small-sized rolls filled each filled with something interesting 
• a bag of crisps.  I'm currently going through a multi-grain phase, although I do think that the tagline they have of "tiny moments of extraordinary pleasure" is pushing it a bit
• a pot filled with three chopped carrots, three chopped sticks of celery and a handful of cherry tomatoes.  If I'm feeling really crazy, I might chop up a red pepper too, although I almost never do that.
• a banana and an orange or whatever other fruit we might have lying about the house (I'm all about my five a day).  Today I had a pineapple!
• I do drink caffeinated coffee though.  Lots of caffeinated coffee.  I'm not that clean living.

Once or twice a week, I'll also treat myself to a cup of bovril to wash it all down.  Otherwise it's just a big glass of water.  That's just how I roll: livin' in the moment.

The chopped vegetables are mainly there to act as a distraction tactic to stop me eating my rolls much before noon.  Once the clock hits twelve, unless I'm out running (Tuesdays and Fridays), all bets are off and those sandwiches are history.  Not that I'm a creature of habit or anything.

Anyway.  The headline sandwich.  As I reach for the tupperware container holding my rolls, I usually have a very clear picture in mind which of the two I'm going to eat first: it's almost always the one that I find the more interesting of the two; the one that I've been most looking forward to eating since I made it at breakfast time.  That's the headliner.  Today, for instance, was a choice between the thick-sliced farmer's market ham with sloe chutney or the buttered turkey breast with a grind of pepper, some mustardy mayonnaise and a chopped tomato.  The ham was always going to win that one... but yesterday it lost out to the vintage gruyere, sliced chorizo and chili jam roll.... you can never really tell until the day.

You all do this too, right?

Right.

Ah.  I'll get my coat.

Just imagine: this is what I look forward to every morning at work.  The hours just fly by in my office, I tell you....

savour the flavour....

When I’m out, although I’ll often make a show of looking at the rest of the menu, I’ll often just default to the beef. I may have the best of intentions to try the sea bass, but when the time comes, I always seem to end up blurting out that I’m having the beef. Done well – but definitely not well done – beef can be an absolute delight; the problem is that, nine times out of ten, it’s usually a disappointment: too fatty; overcooked; chewy… it seems that getting it right can be the hardest thing.  I will admit that I'm a bit fussy and, if I'm buying meat myself, I'm lucky enough to be able to afford to buy organic, aged meat from a local farmer: it just tastes nicer, and I think I owe it to the animal to have as good a life as is possible.  If I order meat in a restaurant, I'd far rather order something similar than anything else.  I mean, what kind of life has the cow that provided that £1.99 steak likely to have had?  I know I'm lucky to be able to afford that choice, but I can and so that's the choice I make.  Even if I couldn't afford that choice, I think I'd rather eat something else entirely than buy the bovine equivalent of a battery hen.

I also like my meat bloody, and I almost always order it rare. What could be easier? Just a flash of heat to seal the outside then let it rest for a moment before serving. Simple. Except that apparently it isn’t. Part of the problem is that when we say “rare” in this country, apparently we don’t really mean rare at all and actually mean “a bit pink in the middle”. Nice, perhaps, but definitely not rare and certainly not oozing blood. I once ordered a rare steak at a restaurant just around the corner from us, and when it came out medium at best, I did the English thing for a while and ummed and ahhed about just eating it to avoid causing a fuss, but as it was the most expensive item on the menu, I thought I’d send it back. You’d think I’d insulted the waiter’s family. When the next steak came out, it was stone cold – the butter on the top steadfastly refusing to melt – but it was also still only medium. Who finds it easier to heat up a pre-cooked steak from the fridge than to simply cook a raw steak? Apparently they do. I’ve not been back since.

Anyway. My reason for mentioning this is that, in spite of all the pitfalls, when it’s right, there’s surely no more satisfying dish. On Saturday, I was lucky enough to eat at the Hand and Flowers in Marlow with some dear friends. I looked at the menu and seriously considered avoiding the beef simply because it’s my default order… and the duck is the restaurant’s speciality, after all… but in the end I decided that if you can’t order the steak at a two Michelin starred restaurant, then when can you?

Fillet of Lancashire Beef with Hand and Flowers Chips and Béarnaise Sauce.

Mmm. Good choice.

It was, without a shadow of a doubt, the best piece of meat – never mind the best piece of beef – that I have ever had the pleasure of tasting: cobblestoned in shape and seared on the outside, it was moist, succulent and bloody on the inside. It was astonishingly good. The chips were amazing in their own right, but early on I realised that my priority had to be the meat. It was almost an emotional experience. Epic. The meat sweats I had for the next few hours were a small price to pay.

The other stuff I ate there – for the record, Salt Cod Scotch Egg with Chorizo and Red Pepper Sauce and a Passion Fruit Soufflé with Kaffir Lime Ice Cream and Warm Toffee – was also delicious, and the company was excellent, but that beef was the showstopper. If I go back, I’m ordering it again too.

Mind you, it was so good, that perhaps I should avoid ordering the beef the next time I eat out as it’s certain to be disappointing by comparison.

Ah. Who am I kidding? I’ll be right on it.

Needless to say, my teenage vegetarian phase was a short one. Less than a day, if memory serves me correctly.

---

(Incidentally, I've been going down to Oxford for much of the last 20 years, but this was the first time that I've been to the Ashmolean, the Pitt Rivers museum or the Castle.  I must be getting cultured in my old age)

what you got cooking?

You can't beat a good beef casserole, can you? When I was growing up, this -- ideally served with rhubarb crumble and custard to follow -- was pretty much my favourite dish. To this day, if there's a vaguely beef stew-type recipe on the menu, you can be reasonably assured that that's what I'll be ordering: goulash, boeuf bourguignon, hotpot...whatever, that's what I'll have (unless there's pie. You also can't beat a good pie). When I go to visit my parents, there's a better than even chance that my mum will have cooked me a casserole.

Funnily enough, even though I like to cook, it's not really a dish that I have ever prepared myself. Back in February this year, the Guardian ran an article on beef stew with dumplings in their "best ever...." cooking series. I don't know if you've ever seen them (and last week they did chile con carne, so it's well worth a look - I'll definitely be trying their 'no tomato' chili), but this is where they take a classic dish, try a number of variations and then come up with their definitive recipe. The comments below the articles are usually pretty good too, with readers offering their own tips and advice for cooking the dish in hand.

The discussion on the best ever beef stew seemed to largely focus on which cut of beef to use, in the end coming down firmly on the side of shin. The meat can be pretty sinewy, but when slow cooked for a long period of time, this sinew breaks down and helps to add depth and thickness to the gravy. There was also some discussion about whether or not beef stock or stout was the best liquid to add, concluding in the end that a mixture of both worked pretty well.

I saved the recipe, but it wasn't until I was at the farmer's market on Saturday morning and saw some Aberdeen Angus shin on sale that I actually decided I should give it a go. I love slow cooking dishes, and prepared this on Saturday evening to eat for tea on Sunday (like chile, this is one of those dishes that tastes better on the next day, and can there be a more satisfying meal to end the weekend?).

The texture and flavour of the shin was delicious as the meat dissolved right down into the sauce, but I'm still convinced that this can be improved. I seem to remember that Nigella uses anchovies in her beef stew recipe, and they disappear in the cooking but help to add a depth of flavour. I'll be cooking this again, but now I've done it once, I'm inclined to experiment around the edges a little.

I should cook more often. It's very therapeutic to spend some time in the kitchen preparing a meal with a glass of wine whilst listening to a bit of music.

----

If you're interested, here's the recipe. I thought the dumplings needed longer, and so simmered the last bit for an extra half hour or so, and I subsituted swede for turnip, but apart from that I made the dish as is (well, it looked a bit dry, so I added an extra 200ml or so of Guinness and a drop more beef stock too):

Perfect beef stew

Serves 4 – 6

800g shin of beef
2 tbsp flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
Beef dripping, butter or oil (I used butter)
2 onions, sliced
300ml beef stock
300ml stout
1 bay leaf
3 sprigs of thyme
2 carrots, peeled and cut into chunky slices
2 small turnips, peeled and cut into chunks (I used swede)

For the dumplings:
100g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
50g suet

Small bunch of chives and parsley, finely chopped

1. Trim the beef of its outer sinew and cut into large chunks. Toss with the seasoned flour to coat. Heat a heavy-bottomed casserole or pan on a medium flame and add a knob of dripping or butter, or a couple of tablespoons of oil. Brown the meat in batches, adding more fat if necessary – be careful not to overcrowd the pan, or it will boil in its own juices – then transfer to a bowl. Scrape the bottom of the pan regularly to prevent any residue from burning.

2. Once all the meat is browned, add some more fat to the pan and cook the onions until soft and slightly browned. Add them to the beef and then pour in a little stock and scrape the bottom of the pan to deglaze it. Add the beef and onions, the rest of the stock and the stout, season, and add the herbs. Bring to the boil, then partially cover, turn down the heat, and simmer gently for two hours.

3. Add the carrots and turnips, and simmer for about another hour, until the meat is tender enough to cut with a spoon. Leave to cool, overnight if possible, and then lift the solidified fat off the top and bring to a simmer.

4. Meanwhile, make the dumplings by sifting the flour into a bowl and adding the rest of the ingredients and just enough cold water to bring it together into a dough. Roll it into 6 dumplings and add these to the stew. Partially cover and simmer for 25 minutes, then check the seasoning of the gravy, and serve with steamed greens.

I'm always interested in tips if you've got any you'd care to share. Proper soul food.... at least it is for me, anyway.

it all depends on your appetite....

Lest this become all about Africa, how about I reminisce about a delicious meal instead?

On Friday last week, I took C. to Le Gavroche to celebrate Christmas and her birthday.  Yes, Christmas was months ago, but her birthday was last week.  Cut me some slack, eh... we've been away.  Anyway.  Le Gavroche is Michel Roux Jr's restaurant in London and it has two Michelin stars.  If you watched "Masterchef: The Professionals" then you'll probably remember him as being the nice chef with the big, brown eyes.  Well, that's how C. remembers him anyway.

It's not my habit to eat at disgustingly good restaurants, certainly not when I'm not working, but if you're going to do it, then you might as well do it in style, eh?  We both went for the set "Menu Exceptionnel", with me opting to go for the wine specially selected to accompany each course.

Was it any good?  Well, before we get into that, here's what we had:

 > Lieu Jaune en Sashimi
Beetroot Cured Pollock Sashimi with a Mango Dressing and King prawn
served with..... Zen Sake Daiginjo

 > Ballotine de Foie Gras au Pain d'Epices et Fruits Sec
Duck Foie Gras Rolled in Gingerbread Crumbs with Dried Fruit Steeped in Brandy
served with..... Maury Amiel Vintage Blanc 2007

 > Souffle Suissesse
Cheese Souffle Cooked on Double Cream
served with..... Champagne Martel "Cuvee Victoire" 1998 Fût de Chêne

> Saumon Sauvage Amandine, Asperges et Jambon de Bayonne
Wild Salmon with Almonds, Asparagus, Ham and Garlic Crisps
served with..... Chateauneuf du Pape Blanc "La Bernardine" 2007 Domaine M. Chapoutier

> Emincé de Poulpe et Coquilles St Jacques Parfumé au Piment d'Espelette
Octopus with Seared Scallops with a Tomato and Basque Chilli Pepper Dressing
served with..... Riesling Heimbourg de Turckheim Domaine Zind Humbrecht 

> Canon et Ris d'Agneau, Pommes Boulangère et Petit Pois a la Menthe
Loin of Lamb and Sweetbreads, Fresh Peas and Mint
served with.... Domaine de Gavoty "Cuveé Clarendon" 2001 Cotes de Provence

> Le Plateau de Fromages Affinés
Selection of French and British Farmhouse Cheese
served with..... Chateau la Croix 2004 Pomerol

 > Ouefs a la Niege, creme vanille et Compote de Fraises
Soft Caramel Covered Meringue, Vanilla Cream and Poached Strawberries
served with..... Vin de Constance 2005 Klein Constantia

 > Cafe et Petits Fours

Any good?  Yeah, not bad.

Understatement aside, it was a beautifully balanced meal.  Enough but not too much, with each wine carefully chosen to complement the dish I was eating, but not enough of it to leave me legless by the end.  It was fantastic.  Not cheap, but still one of the best value meals I have ever eaten. Mmmmm.  I can still taste that souffle and the dried apriot flavour of the champagne that came with it.  Or that foie gras..... ah.  Food.  Good.

because the night....

How can it be that we're barely into October and the clocks haven't even gone back, yet I find myself having to put on my fluorescent vest before I go out on a run this evening? It was only just gone seven by the time I got out of the door, but it was already properly dark. It had been raining as I drove home from work a few minutes before, so as well as my bright yellow vest, I was wrapped up in full-length running leggings, a long-sleeved thermal top, a hat and a pair of gloves. This is pretty much the running gear that I will be using in the middle of December, and I'm not quite sure that I'm ready to give up on the fairer seasons and move straight into deepest, darkest winter just yet.

It was a fantastic run too. The rain had just stopped as I stepped out of the door, so the world was clean and fresh smelling, my legs were feeling fresh and I barely bumped into a soul as I negotiated my way around sleeping geese nestled up on the path against the river Trent. I was sealed in behind my headphones as usual, and my iPod managed to kick up a selection of tunes that really seemed to suit my mood, including "Mr. Brightside", "The Queen is Dead" and the Nirvana version of "The Man Who Sold the World". If there's a better way to put the frustrations of another day in the office behind you, then I'm not sure I know what it is (although I will be having a nice cool glass of refreshing beer in a minute....).

You know what the absolute highlight of my run was though? It was the dawning realisation, about ten minutes in and as my body began to throw off heat, that my running top smelt really strongly of goulash. This is not in the least bit surprising, really, given that the top has been hanging in the kitchen where for much of the last twenty-four hours I have been stewing up a huge pot of the same. 800g of beef; 800g of finely chopped onion; three or four heaped tablespoons of sweet paprika, some garlic, a splash of vinegar, some water and a lot of pleasing simmering and stirring.

My running tops have certainly smelt of worse things, that's for sure.

If winter heralds in the arrival of hearty stews for supper, then perhaps it's not so bad after all.